‘Mountains May Depart’ screening | Eye on the Arts

The Brentano String Quartet will perform at Middlebury College on April 28 at 8 p.m. Prior to the performance, a lecture by Professor of Music Larry Hamberlin is slated at 7 p.m. Tickets are $25 per person. For more information, visit middlebury.edu.

In Montpelier, the running Art Resources Association (ARA) exhibit, “Poem City,” will close April 29 at 3 p.m. For the exhibit members of the ARA collaborated with local poets to create a unique multimedia experience. For more information, visit kellogghubbard.org.

Rock legends the Barenaked Ladies will perform in Burlington on April 29.

Barenaked Ladies will perform at the Flynn Theater in Burlington on April 29. With more than 14 million album sales worldwide, Barenaked Ladies is an iconic rock band with more than three decades of touring and recording under their belt. The band is slated to take the stage at 7 p.m. For more information, visit flynntix.org.

Grammy award-winning comedienne Kathy Griffin’s Celebrity Run-In tour will make a stop at Rutland’s Paramount Theater on April 30 at 8 p.m. Griffin will be touring in support of her new book “Kathy Griffin’s Celebrity Run-Ins: My A-Z Index,” released in November 2016. The book chronicles celebrities she has met and the anecdotes only she can tell about them, according to organizers. Tickets to Griffin’s Rutland tour stop range from $35-75. For more information, visit paramountvt.org.

Phoenix Books Rutland will host a free reading by Williston-based poet Amy Huntington on April 29 at 11 a.m. Huntington will read from her new book “Fresh-Picked Poetry.” For more information, visit phoenixbooks.biz.

Zhao Tao as Shen Tao in “Mountains May Depart,” which will be shown in Middlebury on April 29.

‘Mountains May Depart’ screening set April 29

A free screening of the 2015 Jia Zhangke film “Mountains May Depart” is slated for April 29 at 3 p.m. in the Dana Auditorium on Middlebury College campus. Organizers of the screening say that the film — which aims to study how China’s economic boom and the culture of materialism it has spawned have affected the bonds of family, tradition and love — is “intensely moving.”

“Mountains May Depart” follows the story of Shen Tao, a girl with two men vying for her hand — Zhang, an entrepreneur, and Liangzi, who works in a coal mine.

“It’s because I’ve experienced my share of ups and downs in life that I wanted to make ‘Mountains May Depart,’” said Director Jia Zhangke, in a press release. “China’s economic development began to skyrocket in the 1990s. Living in this surreal economic environment has inevitably changed the ways that people deal with their emotions.

“The impulse behind this film is to examine the effect of putting financial considerations ahead of emotional relationships. If we imagine a point ten years into our future, how will we look back on what’s happening today? And how will we understand freedom?”

The movie, sponsored by the Hirschfield International Film Series, will be screened in Cantonese with English subtitles. For more information, visit middlebury.edu/arts.

Ongoing

Focus on the Sheldon, an exhibit featuring five Middlebury photographers that opened on March 17, will run through May 13. Regular gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $5 for adults and $3 for minors. For more information, visit henrysheldonmuseum.org.